The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.
It will take a few hours, but FOR NOW there won’t be a bot giving reviews of the source.
The goal was simple: make it easier to show biased sources. This was to give you and the mods a better view of what we were looking at.
The mod team is in agreement: one source of truth isn’t enough. We are working on a tool to give a composite score, from multiple sources, all open source.
Keep it gone. MBFC and others are not a source of truth.
Adding multiple sources of bias does not produce an unbiased result.
2nd. It’s just not necessary. Frankly what’s more off putting is the outright bizarre insistence on the mods part and outright denial of feedback. If the bot comes back I’m blocking the community, there are other streams for news.
Edit: didn’t realize the “new and improved” bot is back. Good luck yall.
If everyone who doesn’t like the bot blocks it, people entering the community will see the bot upvoted. That will mean they assume the general consensus is that the bot is trustworthy and accurate.
Ok. Think your response through.
That means all news outlets are biased as well. This is why we want something that gives a composite score. If all sources say “this news outlet is shit”, maybe we take it with a grain of salt, or maybe we black list it. At a minimum, it helps mods and readers get a context of the content.
I think the problem arises from the fact that I don’t know what you mean by “this news outlet is shit”. Maybe we can define exactly what we mean here and block such news sites from being posted.
I don’t think bias can be correlated with article quality, and we should be engaging with articles and ideas based on the merits within, not some aggregate made up thing like “bias”. I’m not saying it’s not a real thing, just that it’s made up and subjective enough to be in my view a useless measure and a fruitless endeavour to get a meaningful measure in the first place.
If you want a bunch of opinions on the usefulness of an article then we have votes already.
Obviously I don’t have the context of a mod, so if there are specific cases where you need a bias rating, however flawed, to do that job effectively then sure but I think that’s best developed as say a browser extension (or maybe one exists already) so it’s at least opt in.
EDIT: Also want to say I appreciate both the call for feedback and also the decision to opt out of the bot for now.
Sorry for any confusion. We’re moving away from bias - that’s the goal, at least.
News source being “shit” examples:
- A Voice for Men
- The Activist Mommy
- Adams County Times
- Akron Reporter
- Albany Standard
- American College of Pediatricians
- Ames Today
- Antelope Valley Today
- Baltimore City Wire
- Benton Times
- Bloomington Leader
I could go on, but I’m at work right now.
No one wants this bot. In the last thread asking for feedback there was an overwhelming majority that did not want it. You’re attached to it because you made it. People don’t want it. It happens. Stop it.
I didn’t make the bot. I’m working on the aggregate tool, which isn’t developed yet.
The votes were overwhelmingly more positive than negative about it. We had the vocal minority against it, but the ones who wanted it let it be known.
Seems like we’re not reading the same thread https://lemmy.world/post/18775630
About half of the unique comments by my count are suggestions for improvements or expressions of support. The 10 posts with the most downvotes are all requests to remove the bot.
Let’s be realistic - this is far from consensus.
Good riddance.
Why do you insist on fixing the bot instead of directing your energy elsewhere? Fixing the media bias bot to not have any bias is a fool’s errand.
The last sticky thread actually had some really good feedback, like using a fact checker that is part of the International Fact Checking Network (of which MBFC is not a member) and many other similarly great suggestions.
One of the issues might be in the name. We don’t want to create a bias bot. That seems like a fool’s errand, which is one thing we learned in the process of implementing the MBFC bot. We want to create something that makes people aware of posts that are from medium to low quality sources. Obviously, if the source is super sketchy, we’d delete it, but there’s a lot of grey area where we leave things up.
Mods should take note that this is how you listen to community feedback. Some actual learning is happening here, instead of doubling down we saw in the other thread
The other thread was an attempt to gauge feedback on specific ideas (as this post mentions, they are so in the works) and it precipitated this post
There’s obviously no problem with incorporating other sources as well but, as I pointed out in that other thread, MBFC uses the IFCN for fact-checking per their methodology and Wikipedia page. They also explain why they use IFCN fact-checkers in their FAQ.
Don’t grade sources on leftness or rightness. It’s relative. Aggregation doesn’t fix the problem of Overton shift.
